Reform UK and Restore Britain: Inside the new political rivalry on the right

Hello and welcome to Fire at Will, the new show from GB News. Each week we will take

aim at the sacred cows of the modern age, all in pursuit of, well, not my truth, not

your truth, certainly not their truth, but the truth. I'm delighted today to be joined

by Head of Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the author of the wonderful new book

The Great Realignment, how timely it is, Stephen Davies. Stephen, welcome to the show

Thank you very much for having me on. It's a delight to have you on

And as I said, your book, which is about the rise of the new right

in British politics, could not be more prescient. We are currently looking at a by-election in Makerfield

in which the new right is well and truly on display. We have gone from effectively a two to two and a half party system

in the United Kingdom to a five to six party system. Of course, this is in some ways aligned with what is happening

across the Anglosphere. You're seeing the rise of One Nation in Australia

seeing the rise of populist or nativist right-wing parties across Europe. So the UK experience, whilst it has some unique features, is not necessarily

unique in and of itself. I guess the first question to set the scene is, how did we get

here? How did we move from that two and a half party system to the fragmented politics that we

see today? Well, I think in one way, it's quite a complicated story, but ultimately, it's quite

simple. What happened was this. Throughout most of the 20th century, the dominant issue in politics

the issue that everything revolved around, was a division between, if you like, socialism

and capitalism. Whether or not you wanted a large role for government in the economy

and if so, how large it should be, or how small should it be. But that argument, if you like

faded away after 1990, because one side, radical socialism, had been decisively defeated

with the fall of the Berlin Wall. And what you emerged into then was an era

about 20 years from 1992, just before the financial crisis, of technocratic politics in which it seemed as though

the life, the ideological conflict, had been sucked out of politics. And during that time, a lot of people increasingly

became concerned about a different issue, which was that of national identity

And the degree to which national identity and the independence, the sovereignty of national states

was being undermined by a whole number of developments, prominently but not exclusively, large-scale migration

And the political class in one country after another, not least Britain, refused to, if you like

engage with those concerns. They not only didn't talk about it, they abused the people who raised these concerns

as being illegitimate, beyond the pale, which is partly what the label of populist implies

And eventually the concern about this issue simply became too strong to be contained

And because the existing political class and structures had not dealt with it or handled it

it found expression, even with the barriers of first press the post

in new political formations like the Reform Party. Yes, and we will get to the fragmentation

that that has created on the right. But in many ways, the figure that most embodies

the type of technocratic managerialism that you refer to is Tony Blair

And many of the themes that we'll discuss today really started, or at least found their voice

most fully during the Blair years. Explain to me how, basically, Tony Blair went about creating

that sort of technocratic managerialism from which now the new right is almost a response to

Well, he did it in several ways. It's fair to say that this technocratic managerialism

is often described as neoliberalism. That's the label that's often attached to it

originally by the left, increasingly by the right as well. And it's people like Blair or Bill Clinton or Gerhard Schroeder

who are really responsible for that. So what Blair did was, firstly, he ditched socialism

I mean, we forget the first thing he did when becoming Labour leader was to write the old Clause 4 out of the Labour Party constitution

the statement that the goal of the Labour Party was to have communal ownership of the means of production

in order to serve the interests of the workers by hand or by brain

He got rid of that. And instead, he reduced the Labour Party's political project

being not one of systemic transformation, but of social amelioration, if you will

But the other thing he then did, he and his government, was to put through a series of acts of Parliament

notably the Equality Act and also the Human Rights Act, which created, although this wasn't apparent at the time

something completely new in the way of the form of governance, because what it did was it took a lot of ultimate decision-making power

away from Parliament and the elected legislature and put it in the hands of the judiciary

and also of quangos, non-state organisations. Now, this process wasn't just confined to Britain

You can't say this is all Tony Blair's evil genius or benign genius, if you like

because similar patterns have happened in countries all over the world. It has a kind of global cause

He was just the politician who embodied it or brought it into being in this world

But that's what he did. And so he created a kind of state

in which it's become increasingly apparent that the public can vote for or demand certain things

and not necessarily just things of a right-wing nature, by the way, but they don't happen because there are just too many institutional barriers

which work to frustrate what you might call the popular will. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, actually

but when it reaches the level it has now, it becomes deeply problematic for political stability

And, of course, Blair re-emerged in public discourse in recent weeks with that essay on the ills both of the Labour Party

and of the country. To what extent did you read that injection from Blair

as basically a perhaps last-ditch attempt to protect the model that he willed into being

Well, I think it was a bit more than that, actually, to be fair to him. I think he rode back on a lot of the policies

that were being followed during his own premiership and the years that followed

So I think that what he was saying essentially was that, yes, we do need to maintain the kind of position

the kind of state that I created, because it's a good thing. But he did also say that, however

there's going to have to be some major changes and course corrections if we're to do that

And I think that's partly what all the stuff about AI was about, because although he quite clearly and genuinely believes

that AI is transformative and that if you don jump on the AI train you going to miss out on a whole bunch of transformative effects that it will have I think that he also believes that it the only

way really to save the state that he created, to make it actually effective as opposed to simply

a force for stasis. In other words, you have to radically reform public administration, he's saying

through adopting AI in all levels of governance and administration. So I think he's a much more

significant and formidable figure than most of the people who followed him. And part of that is

that he's very clear sighted, I think, about where we are. So yes, he does want to keep that show

going, but he wants also to change and update it, if you will, which is something that the current

hapless prime minister seems to be incapable of doing. But this is where I have a problem

So you will have noticed that he had a nine point plan at the back end of that essay for the future

of this country, there was a very conspicuous policy area that was absent, and that was legal

migration. And legal migration more so than any other area is what has driven that nativist or

populist instinct on the right, which is across the country now, more than anything else. So to

ignore that is perhaps, I would argue, disingenuous. But it's particularly disingenuous

if you're going to push an AI agenda, which most people believe will eliminate and is

already eliminating a lot of entry-level jobs, administrative jobs, basic jobs, which at the

moment are carried out by the many, many legal migrants that enter this country. So I don't

understand how you can at one hand say, we need to embrace AI and the efficiencies that it will

bring, and at the same time say, we need to continue a policy of mass migration

which will flood a jobs market, which is inevitably getting smaller and smaller as a

of that technology. Okay, several things to say to that. First of all, he doesn't necessarily

actually say, oh, we need to continue with the policy of mass migration. Now, what he

as you say, he ignores what is really the big issue at the moment, the thing that has been

mobilizing an ever large number of voters to vote against the established political order

What he could do, but doesn't do, is to actually address those voters and have a debate or an

argument with them. I mean, you could make the case, well, you're upset about mass migration

Here's why you should not be upset, why it's a good thing, why, you know, maybe it's inevitable

You could make that argument. He doesn't do that. But also, I think that there is a subtext to this

So let's say you do have, as I think there will be, a mass effect upon large areas of employment

from AI. I think it's going to wipe out an enormous number of process, routine process-driven

white-collar jobs. Well, what are you going to do with all those displaced workers? Well

one thing might be, well, you no longer need large-scale immigration to look after issues like

social care, caring for the elderly, a whole bunch of other stuff. If you suddenly have several

million displaced workers in the UK, you can really push back on the migration because you're

no longer going to need to import lots and lots of workers to do those, not at the current moment

not very well paid service jobs. Now, this is still politically explosive

which is why I don't think he really confronts it, because it does mean a lot of people losing not only income

but also status. And that's always going to be politically explosive. So I think, as you say, that is rather disingenuous on this part

And can I add to that? The argument that you will often hear is, well, English men and women simply don't want to do those types of jobs

picking the fruit or wiping the bums, or, you know, all of those sorts of jobs, which at the moment we say, well, they're beneath English men or women

So let's get cheap foreign labor to deal with them. My argument would be let's see whether or not people will take those jobs if the alternative is to go hungry

as opposed to an overly generous welfare system, which incentivizes people to sit on the couch as opposed to taking those jobs

So welfare reform has to be a big part of this story, doesn't it? It does, absolutely

I mean, at the moment, because of very high national minimum wage and because of the way the welfare system works, there is effectively a flaw on income

And what that means is there are a lot of jobs which are really only as current things currently stand economically viable if they pay a wage which is right at that minimum floor level or even perhaps below it

And not only that, those jobs have low status. and a lot of people who might barely consider them

you know, even with the welfare system because of low pay, will probably be very reluctant to do it

because of the low status. So yes, it has to be a major element in it. If you're going to, you know

address the fact that we do have such huge, constant and steadily increasing needs

in areas like the care sector, you have to either pay a lot more and be prepared to accept the huge rising costs

that that entails, or you have to reform the welfare system. To be fair to Blair, he does say that you need to reform the welfare system

That is part of his nine-point plan, as you say. He is aware, I think, of the fact that the welfare system at the moment

is in seriously bad trouble and completely out of control. Although, again, the real problem there, the thing that's really breaking the bank

is the pension liabilities that we have, which is another issue entirely

Yeah. I personally just can't get past Ari may not be quite the right word, but the reality that of those nine points that he mentioned, all of them are so much harder to get across the line now because of the constitutional vandalism that you mentioned

because reform has been made so much difficult, because whenever a politician goes to try and push something

through Whitehall, they will come up against that quango or they'll come up against that judicial review

or they'll come up against the forces which now are inbuilt within the system to stop change from happening

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is deeply ironic, and it's very noticeable

that he didn't mention that legacy of his government. And I would add, by the way, that this is constantly being presented

as the right being blocked. But actually, if the radical left ever got into power in this country or if a left wing government tried to do all sorts of things, they would find that they were blocked

So, for example, if any left of centre government tried a massive programme of state house building, they would find that the planning system, the way it operates now, the judicial reviews that we have with anything would stop them doing that

So it's any kind of government action, basically, will not be allowed. We've resulted in a state of affairs where the state spends almost 50% of total output, but can actually do almost nothing, which is a terrible position to be in

Hmm. Okay. So we live in a post-1990, I guess, still in the shadow of that technocratic managerial consensus, which Blair then turbocharged and the conservatives continued on with. Let's turn to the response to that now, and that is the response on the right, which you have written about wonderfully well

we have seen now the rise of reform under Farage more recently the rise of Restore which is the even further the more aggressively right or conservative conservative or nativist option perhaps on the right Just perhaps set the scene for me How do you view each of the three parties on the right now

And how do you see that mix playing out going forward? Well, this is the core of the argument in my book, which you kindly alluded to

What has happened in the last 15 years or so is that we've had a realignment of politics

away from economics to issues of identity and culture, basically. Now, what that means is this, the nature of the right, what the term right refers to

the content of that term, if you will, has changed. If you go back to the 1990s, if you said somebody was on the right

what you meant was primarily that they favoured free markets as opposed to state economic controls

interventionism. Some of those people were also socially conservative, but there were others who

were also socially liberal, consistent libertarians and so on. But what they had in common was the

thing that united the right was a commitment to be against socialism and in favour of free markets

and sceptical about things like the welfare state. Nowadays, the right refers to a quite different

kind of group of people. Some of them are the same, but a lot of them are not. It now means people who

are hostile to large-scale migration and demographical cultural transformation, who do not

like the surrender of sovereignty to supranational bodies and government regulations and agreements

Now, some of those people are still in favour of free markets, but a lot of the people who are in

favour of free markets are actually opposed to this new right. They reject the opposition to the EU

for example, or they reject the hostility to migration, at least in the form which it takes

And then on the other hand, a lot of the people who vote for the new right or who are part of it are actually very left of center on economics. They think that the major utilities should be owned by the state. They think that there should be strong controls on international capital flows and that they're skeptical or hostile towards international finance, big tech companies and the like

Now, what that means is that you've got three parties now on the right. And in a way, we are a bit behind the curve here

If you look at continental Europe, the normal pattern is for a party to appear that is nativist, anti-migration, which is also free market

But over time, it moves to the left on economics. This is what's happened in France, for example

Now, what you've got in Britain is, first of all, Restore UK, which is much more radically nativist than the other two parties you mentioned

but which is also the most radically free market of the three. Rupert Lowe is a kind of unreconstructed power light, basically

I think that's a fair description of his views. He wants to combine radical free market, small state reform

with really, really rigid nationalism. On the other hand, reform UK is a not quite as radical as on the national identity front as Restore, mainly because Nigel Farad, Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf, the rest of the leadership, they're basically civic nationalists

They just think that we've let in too many people from too many diverse cultures or cultures which are sufficiently different from the predominant culture of the UK that it's disruptive

But there are still ultimately civic nationalists, not ethnic nationalists. Just before you go on, because I think we throw around the terms civic nationalist and ethno-nationalist a lot

And I actually think a lot of people don't really know what that means. Can I just explain that? The difference is quite simple

And for an ethnic nationalist, the thing that determines your national identity is your biological descent, the ethnicity that you have, essentially

You may let the odd person into the inside group of the nation who doesn't have that descent, but essentially that's what defines it

It's a blood and soil definition of what national identity is. It's either defined by descent and or living, you and your ancestors having been in the same part of the world for a long time

Whereas a civic nationalist identity says that identity is defined by obedience to a shared system of laws and loyalty and identification with a set of shared national traditions, which is not necessarily tied to ethnicity

So you can be from a different ethnicity, but you can still be a member of the national group if you have that kind of loyalty to an identification with the kind of historic national identity and laws and principles

So that's what the difference is, basically. To clarify the parameters of ethnic nationalism, let's use me as an example

I'm an immigrant to England. I moved here from Australia. My descent is Anglo-Saxon

There's some Scottish in there. I don't know exactly, but it is broadly Anglo-Saxon in nature

Where do I fit? well in a strict ethnic nationalism sense you that blood and soul said that you would not be

british because you're not uh part of you know a community that's been living here for

ethnicity has been living in this particular part of the world for a long time you're obviously

close connected because your ancestors went to australia from this part of the world however if

you have a certain kind of ethnic identity one that defines the national identity in racial terms

then you would be closer to being British than, let's say, somebody like Rishi Sunna, for example

That would be the way a really kind of racial form of ethnic identity would be defined

But usually it's not like that. It's usually in most forms of ethnic identity

If you come from another part of the world and you don't have a familial connection that, you know, is relatively recent

then you're not a member of the nation, even if you belong to the same racial group or, you know

ultimate from far back when ethnic line of descent. So that's what the difference is

So I interrupt you. Going back to you. So, yeah. Reform are not as strongly ethno-nationalist as restorers

but they're very confused about the economics. Now, the Conservative Party, finally to wrap up

they are, if you like, in a very awkward position because they're riding the fence because about half of their voters

at least half of their voters, are actually on the non-nationalist side

They favour a moderate form of cosmopolitanism, which is the alternative to nationalism

and this new alignment. So, in fact, actually, you know, for example

according to a very recent poll, more than half of Conservative voters now, people who say they would vote Conservative

are pro-Remain, pro-no, think it was a mistake to leave the EU

But on the other hand, they're also trying to appeal to and fend off reform

So they're in a very awkward position of having, if you like, a foot in the centre and a foot in the right

and that's a very uncomfortable position. The Labour Party is in the same position on the left, by the way

They have to kind of fight off the Greens on one side while trying to appeal to a kind of more left liberal centre

So that's how the three parties line up on the right. Well, let's explore that wedge position that the Conservatives now find themselves in

because I have noticed that, and for me, that is strategically, it is impossible for them to be able to reconcile that position long term which is why I personally think that the Conservatives strategically don have a lane anymore which would be

terminal. Now, I've heard you argue that you don't necessarily think that's the case. And I want to

test that because if you do want to do the, you know, kind of generally free-ish markets

you know, neoliberal thing, but with, you know, a kind and caring face and, you know, some anti-Trump

sentiment you can do the lib dems now you can do reform if you want the more nationalistic element

if you want hardcore kind of old school you know uh nativist old school in some respects right-wing

conservatism you can do um uh you can do restore i don't see how the conservatives have a lane in

that very congested marketplace on the right now i don't know how they can survive well they i think

they can survive as a party but i i personally think and this is this it sounds almost self

contradictory given history i think they will not survive as a party of the right because i think the

right is going forward is going to be defined and is now defined by national identity claims and

things of that sort as you say it's not clear where there's room for them on that plus they're

in a very invidious position if they tack more towards reform uh they will lose lots of voters

and seats to the Liberal Democrats. If, on the other hand, they try to avoid that

they will, you know, shed voters to reform, although they may well have shed all the voters to reform

that they are going to nearly, because it's worth noting that they're getting a smaller share

of the vote now by the polls than they did at the last general election

What I think their future would be, would be as the right side of an emergent Liberal centre

because I think you can see emerging at the moment in Britain and in other countries

as in France, for example, a kind of cosmopolitan centre, which itself has a kind of left side and a right side

And I think in Britain, the most likely future for the Conservative Party going forward

in a multi-party system would be as the right-wing side, if you like

the more generally free market side of a cosmopolitan centre block. That's where I think their future will lie

The big problem for them, which may well undo them and leads them actually disappearing

is that their membership is overwhelmingly oriented towards the, you know, right reform leaning side of the political spectrum

So they may not be able to do this. But, you know, for Kemi Badenow, the one thing that might save her and the Tory party's leadership

is that their membership doesn't quite have the kind of power or influence on the party

that it does say in other groups. It is worth saying, by the way, that the Lib Dems are missing an open goal here

I mean, one of the striking features of current British polling is how poorly the Liberal Democrats are doing

given the enormous opportunity they have, I think, to rally the whole of that Liberal Centre bloc

which is about 30% of voters, around them. And they're just not doing that

And it's an interesting question, why? Yeah, probably because Ed Davies out, you know

in the middle of a lake. Yeah, sliding down sites. Jumping on a pogo stick somewhere or something like that

We are now getting a very practical example of this contest on the right in electoral terms via the Makerfield by-election

And it's a relief to be able to discuss this in a non-OFCOM regulated environment

I can't do this on the Linear TV channel, so let's take advantage of the opportunity to do it here

What are your reflections on what we've seen in what I would say is quite a toxic and nasty competition between restore and reform online and increasingly offline

And the Conservatives, I guess, in this particular by-election, just bobbing along to the side of that

What can we learn about the new right from what we are seeing in this by-election contest

Well, several things. Point one, you just alluded to the Conservatives bobbing along

I suspect they're going to lose their deposit, I would bet. strongly. There are large parts of the country where the Conservatives are now in irrelevance

basically, where the fight is going to be between, on the one hand, the left, but that could be either

Greens or Labour, and on the other hand, reform or maybe even restore in some places. So that's

the first point to make. There are large parts of the country where the choice simply aren't in the

running. That said, there are large parts of the country where the Labour Party isn't in the running

where it's conservatives or Lib Dems or Reform or the Greens, perhaps

Second thing to say is that, yes, you've got a pretty vicious fight going on there

both online and on the streets between Reform and Restore. But this is actually what you would expect to find

The most vicious fights, the real animosity tends to gum between people who are on the same broad side

because they're competing for the same pool of voters. And so whether you're left or right

the real like you know no holds barred stick the knife in kind of fights tend to happen on the same

side of politics because it's a fight over which force comes out as dominant on that side of

politics and so what is going on there in this by-election elsewhere between restore and reform

is a huge argument about who is going to define the real nature the kind of core policy standpoints

of this new nationalist right. And that, rather than the sort of fear of splitting the vote, actually

is what's really leading to the viciousness. It doesn't help, of course, that in this particular by-election

it may well mean that Andy Burnham wins the seat more comfortably

than he otherwise would do. I do think he's the favourite anyway, or not to win by a big margin, though

whereas he may actually win a lot more comfortably than would otherwise be the case, given this split

I recall in a conversation you had with Rafe Hadel-Manku recently, maybe recently, I'm guessing around three weeks ago, three or four weeks ago

Yeah, that's about right. You said that you didn't believe at that time that Restore should enter the by-election because they would be electorally embarrassed

It wouldn't be in their interest to do so. Yeah. Have you been surprised at what appears to be a pretty solid foothold that they've been able to get amongst the public at Makerfield

I am actually. and that's quite revealing. I mean, the question is, will they save their deposit

And at the moment, it looks as though they will and probably quite comfortably. I mean, the estimate seems to be, and who knows

because polling by-electives is very difficult, but it seems to be they're going to get about 7% of the vote

something like that. Now, that would be quite an important breakthrough for them

and it would surprise me, yes. I would have predicted them to get about 3% to 4% myself

I think, though, it has to be said that that kind of constituency

is perhaps the one in which they would be most successful. It's the one where their argument has the greatest appeal, I think

The other kind of constituency where they would do well is a certain kind of coastal town, like Rupert Lowe's own seat

but also like Decay of Seaside. Yeah, so those are the two kind of..

I wouldn't expect Restore to do at all well in a rural seat, for example

much less a suburban one. I think they have a particular appeal to ex-industrial Britain

and in particular, Great belt of former mining seeds across South Lancashire, South Yorkshire, Central Yorkshire

which have been simply laid waste by the ending of the mining industry and of which have never recovered

And I think that for various reasons, that's particularly fertile ground for them

But even so, that said, yes, I am quite surprised. You just framed the battle between reform and restore in policy terms

in terms of competing visions for the right side of politics and for the country

How much of this, though, can just be boiled down to the competing personalities of Farage and Rupert Lowe

Oh, a lot. I mean, the thing to realize about politics is that there's always

a kind of combination of two things, different visions, if you will

of ideas about policy, ultimate ultralight philosophy, and the personalities that are seen as somehow embodying

or articulating those different competing visions. And it's not always easy to see which is cause and which is effect

So in the 1920s, to go back a long way, the Liberal Party and Liberalism split between two different ideas

about what Liberalism was, which came to be seen as embodied by the personalities of Aspeth and Lloyd George

Now, in many ways, that was just a pure contingent accident. So I think that's what's happening here

If it was not Farage and Rupert Lowe, it would be to other people, but their own particular personal qualities and personal

history, animosity, I think it's fair to say, has given it this extra spice and has maybe

crystallized a division that I think would otherwise have happened sooner or later anyway

Yeah, I'd go beyond animosity to loathing, perhaps, is his more accurate words

Okay, so that makes sense. um where do you think uh no i want to go to to the response of reform to restore so i think they've

handled the emergence of restore very badly uh they've fallen into the trap that many left-wing

activists fall into of just calling the other side stupid or irrelevant or bigots or or whatever

you know you heard farage say these guys won't crack one percent they're an online phenomena

You have a lot of people in the online realm just calling them a bunch of online incels, for example

Interestingly, I heard a change in tone from Zia Youssef, who I think is one of the more politically astute members of reform, which is ironic given that he is not currently a sitting politician, where he basically said of Restore supporters

I completely understand that these are people who want to turbocharge change in the country

and they are frustrated that change isn't happening quickly enough and they may be frustrated with

reform in that they see that there's not going to be change coming as quickly as they would like

and he said look if you want to see that change I've been trying to argue for that change my whole

life Farage has as well we are the more practical vehicle by which you can make that change happen

So that was an interesting shift in tone. How have you assessed how reform have managed this threat on the right, which they probably weren't expecting a year ago

Yeah. Well, as you say, badly. I mean, I think the reason why they initially handled it badly or ineffectively, I think, is because they thought they had a kind of proprietary right to voters of a certain persuasion

And to find a competitor who is actually making a big impact, if you like, is extremely irritating from that point of view

Now, the kind of response you described from Zia Yusuf is the kind of way that the mainstream of the Labour Party

has typically responded to challenges from its left, people who, you know, in the distant past

it was people who were playing around in the Communist Party, Great Britain, or other left-wing sects of that kind

And that's to say, well, you know, we have the same ultimate goal, or, you know, maybe we won't go as far as you

but we understand your ideals, but we're the ones you want to vote for if you want to get anything done

And that's probably what I think will happen going forward, because on the left, that's historically been what the Labour Party has always done with challenges on its left

It's always adopted that argument. You know, the argument is basically, sure, I understand your ideals, but a vote for party X is a wasted vote

That means you you still basically claiming the propriety right, but you're doing so on the grounds that you're the more effective vehicle for what is ultimately a set of shared ideals

and I expect to see a lot more of that going forward. I suspect also that quite simply initially

they thought that the reform leadership thought they were dealing with quite literally

a kind of fringe online cult so that they could safely abuse and insult

and now they're maybe rethinking that position of everything, whoops, there may be more of these people

with these views than we expected and I think going forward, Eusuf's view

is going to be the more common one. That said, as I said earlier, the most vicious fights in politics are always internecine fights between people who are actually

ideologically pretty much on the same side. You know, the narcissism of small differences

as it's called. So I think that there's also going to be lots of like pretty venomous counter

briefings and leaks to the press and all kinds of other subterfuges, just as you see constantly on

you know, on the left in the Labour Party and elsewhere. And if you want really vicious

like factual fighting, then Corbynistas versus Starmarites is like, you know, off the charts

really. So I think we'll also see a lot of that going on forward. I want to move to a story which has exploded in the last 48 hours. It is one of the most

troubling sad infuriating stories in modern British history And I want to talk about it not merely for the sake of talking about it because I think it is also a way to look at

the great realignment and the philosophical positions of the parties we've been talking

about. This is, of course, the death of Henry Nowak and the disgusting response from the police

who attended to that scene. In response, you've had Nigel Farage come out

and openly say something which again, two years ago, three years ago, would have been seen to be nuclear

by saying, well, this is obviously a case of racist DEI or positive discriminatory policies at the police establishment

He made the again comment which five years ago would have had you booted out of town

or white lives matter too uh you've had restore saying death penalty for for the murderer uh

deportation for the family you've had kemi badneck on morning tv come out and say i don't want to hear

about black lives matter or white lives matter trying to i think take the culture wars out of

it to an extent and then you've had kia starmer come out today and flat out deny that two-tier

policing is a thing, which for me personally, I find an extraordinary comment for anyone

if you've seen that footage, for anyone to deny. How have you reflected on

these tragic events and what it says about modern politics? Well, I think you give a pretty neat summary there of the way different people have responded to it

Personally, my own personal position is very close to the one that Comey Badenock spelt out

I think that what you need in any kind of country, not necessarily a multicultural one in any kind of country, is a law which is neutral in the sense it treats all people equally and in the same way and does not engage in discrimination of any kind

And I think that has been radically undermined by the kind of enforced DEI training and other emphases upon responding to racism on the part that's been imposed since really the George case, or even before then, if you go back to the McPherson report

And it's worth saying, by the way, that one of the tragic aspects of this is that we've imported into this country a kind of set of issues and responses to those issues, which are maybe relevant in the United States, given that country's history, but which are not relevant on this side of the Atlantic

And it reflects the kind of America brainness of our political and media class

Now, on that very point, I'll never forget in the Black Lives Matter protests that took place in the United Kingdom, a default refrain from protesters as they screamed at police officers was don't shoot, don't shoot

When the police officers that were yelling at didn't have guns, as most police officers don't in this country

It was such a good example of that American brain. Yeah, precisely. Absolutely ridiculous

I mean, you know, the way police, the form policing takes is completely different

So I broadly think that one response, which is the one I support, is the one that Kami Baden-Ock made, which is the need to reassert the principles of liberal universalism. I can understand Nigel Farage's point as a critical one. In other words, that this is caused by the kind of, in part, by the kind of aggressive anti-racial politics

but then to assert the kind of white lives matter claim I think is to make this actually

a matter of clashing communal rights now that's a very dangerous route to go down you do not really

want to do that if you think that there are clashing communal rights and two-tier policing

right now the thing to do is not to say well no you need to assert the value of this group and

that group because that still leads to the question of well whose rights trump it it should be

universal individualist human rights that matter. The idea of I'm personally opposed to the death

penalty, and I think that, well, OK, you can say that you want to have the death penalty, but I do

think that is the question you need to ask is how would that have helped in this case? Now, the other

final point to make, which is that what this also reveals is something that people don't seem to be

talking about or so much, which is the utter incompetence of the police. If you see the video

which I have done, that one of the things that strikes you about the terrible way that that young man died, Henry Novak

is the complete uselessness for the police who simply can't understand what is going on in front of them

And I think that's another part of the whole story here. The not just the influence of DEI training and things of that sort on police and their response to this event

But also the fact that, quite simply, there's an elementary, a lack of elementary common sense and policing skills, you could say. So there's also the question of the complete ineffectuality of state institutions

But I think that, yes, this is hopefully going to spark off a pretty serious debate about how we want law to be enforced, what the nature of the law is

And what I hope it leads to is a reassertion of the principle of, as I say, liberal universalism, as opposed to seeing the law and viewing the law and public policy through the prism of communal identity and communal interest

That's a really, really dangerous route to go down. A couple of thoughts on what you've just said

Number one, I didn't interpret it as uselessness as such. I interpreted it as willful blindness

When they took at face value the words of the now convicted murderer over the victim

again that is enough evidence for even the most useless police officer to start taking action The only conclusion I could draw from that is that it wasn so much uselessness although I understand how you can use that word It is a willful blindness

which is ideological in nature. Yes, I think there is an element. There's

undoubtedly an element of that. The point, as you say, when you have clear evidence in front of you

we're talking about, what, a three-minute moment before they did what they should have done in the

first place rather than stuff that far from being helpful was actually harmful um it's the willful

blindness is what governs the initial response and in this case because of the severity of the

injuries which i suspect he would not recover from anyway that initial response was particularly

damaging and enormous made his death much worse in terms of being an experience it would otherwise

have been but then also i think the whole um response more generally in terms of uh not

bothering to check the two now you can say well this is this is a result of the training they've

had certainly it is but there's a wider context here which is the fact that the police generally

are in investigating all kinds of crimes simply not up to the job we can all see this all the

time in things like the enormous likely high levels of shot lifting and so on or the inability

of the police to investigate lots of minor kinds of crime and there and this isn't always explainable

in terms of things like DEI training. So there's two things which unfortunately reinforce each other going on here

I want to go to your second point, which is, well, we need to focus on the principles of liberal universalism

in response to the type of, I would say, illiberal progressive identity politics

that no doubt has led to this tragedy. Now, many people would argue, and I think this is inherent

in what, say, Farage is saying is noble sentiments, but we're too far gone for that

If you take this sort of slightly more passive liberalist approach, that's in some respects how these sorts of positive discrimination policies

are allowed to be propagated. You need a more muscular response to that

But you basically say, look, the liberal worldview has failed, And as a result of that, you need to be more, you need to be, dare I say, illiberal in your response to liberalism to get to a more just outcome

I completely reject that. For my own cards on the table here, I am very much of the liberal mindset and I'm very much of that liberal universalist view

So I think that really at the moment, and I think this kind of episode is going to crystallize this division

You have three different views here. You have, on the one hand, the left-wing form of identity politics, which you describe, rightly say, deeply illiberal and very damaging in its effects, not just this particular case

In the middle, you've got the argument for liberal universalism. On the other hand, you have the argument which is, well, no, what we need to do is to reassert a kind of collective identity, which can, if you like, allow liberalism within that identity

but which has to be asserted over the competing claim of universalism of one kind or another

Now, why do I say that? I mean, I do not believe that liberal universalism has failed

What I think has happened is that it has been undermined over the last 20 to 30 years

by the assertion of things like group rights, group claims. The point about universalism is that it treats human beings as individuals

not as members of groups with ascribed rights and claims and privileges

And what has happened is that those liberal principles have been undermined by, for various reasons

claims that have come from both the managerial side of politics we spoke about at the top

and from the radical left about the assertion of group identities. Now, I do not think that, therefore, you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater

and assert against those group claims, the group claims of the majority

I think that's, like I said, a very, very dangerous way to go

The kind of route that that puts you on is the route towards quite serious civil conflict of one kind or another

And not necessarily conflict between the majority and the minority, conflict within the majority, for example

It leads to, I think, an undermining of the principles of the rule of law as being laws which are applied dispassionately and in a way that does not treat people differently depending on who or what they are, which is what we have from both of the other sides at the moment

So I think that what we need to do going forward is to have a three-corner debate, really. I think that's where we are, actually. And it becomes quite important that we assert that middle ground

Now, you may argue that as an empirical matter, things are too far gone now, which is the kind of thing you implied at the start there. Personally, I think that's not true. I'm optimistic enough to think that we are not that far gone, but we're in a kind of Lebanon-like situation, which is what that would imply

You just mentioned the prospect of civil war. You would be aware of Professor David Betts, who has become prominent in, I guess, podcast circles and to a degree in the wider discourse for raising the prospect of civil war in Europe, continental Europe and the United Kingdom

his argument basically is that if you take a historical view all of the preconditions for

civil war in the united kingdom and in many european countries are currently being met

and just because we uh we haven seen this in some time and in some respects we think of ourselves as more enlightened than you know Cromwell day We can rule out And in fact we can potentially expect some sort of civil conflict

Where do you stand on that? First of all, I disagree with David Betts, but you should take his argument seriously. He's a

distinguished scholar and, you know, he's got a lot of arguments in his favour. It's important to

understand what he means by civil war. He doesn't mean, and he's very clear about this, actually

something like the English Civil War of the 17th century with two clear sides fighting over territory

He means something more like what happened in the Lebanon, you know, back at the end of the 1980s and subsequently

where you have an intercommunal breakdown. So it's a kind of period of prolonged, rather random actually

disorder in which the state loses control and you have lots of intercommunal violence

Now, I think that, yes, such a thing is possible, but I don't think we are as far down the road to that as he does

He thinks it's quite imminent, and he thinks that we're pretty close to it

I think that that's not the case, certainly not in the UK, partly because of the residual strength of institutions

also because, unlike, say, Lebanon or certain other countries, such as France, for example, there isn't enough widespread firearms ownership

I mean, in a way, it's one of the alleviating factors, which means that violence here, or even when it does come, would not be that severe

is because we don't have lots and lots of people who have access to guns, which is, you know, I'd say a relief

But also I think that it's partly because the sheer realities on the ground in terms of demography

and group identification are not at the kind of level that they have reached in the kind of cases he's alluding to

such as the Lebanon or Colombia in the 1950s, early 1960s. So I think that, yes, there is a risk of what he describes

And I think if we continue down our present route, then what he predicts probably would come to pass

But I think we're a long way further from the situation, and he thinks it is

He thinks it's going to happen in the next 10 years or so. Now, that's not to say I don't think we will have political unrest

I think we quite likely will, actually. But I think it's going to have other causes than the ones he alludes to

I think the thing we spoke about earlier, the impact of AI on employment, is more likely to actually cause unrest than the sort of intercommunal tensions that David Betts is talking about

My final question, Steve. We've talked about this strange new world that we find ourselves in, politically fragmented, multi-party, increasingly divided along identity lines as opposed to more classically economic lines that we saw for much, if not most, of the 20th century

Some people think that there will be a reversion to the mean, that the nature of the electoral system in this country means that you will

naturally have a sorting out period that we're in now, and then you fall back to a two to two and a half party system

And, you know, it goes back to something we would consider to be politics as normal

Where do we go from here? Where do you see this going? What does the great, where does the great realignments end

Well, that partly depends on whether or not we form the electoral system. It's very clear that there are, I think, there are two definite new size to our politics, radical left and nationalist right. And we can see an emergent third part, what I've called this kind of liberal centre, if you will, cosmopolitan liberal centre

Now, the question, I think, I do think that we will end up with a two and a half party system

but it will be very different parties divided on very different lines and with probably different electoral bases to the ones we had in the old economics based alignment

And it's also not at all clear that does happen which of the parties currently existing in the five, six party setup we currently have that will come out as being the dominant forces on those two sides

I suspect that in this country and in other countries like France, it's going to be the radical left that will be the half party

And it is going to be the liberal centre and the nationalist right that will be the two major parties, the two major forces in politics

But that's up for grabs. I mean, that is a contingent outcome of how politics works out

However, we could reform the electoral system, or it could be that the fragmentation of parties proves to be sufficiently long lasting that we end up with five or six parties. I think that is not a negligible probability. I would give it about a 30 to 40% chance

But in that case, you will have three very clear subsets, if you will, that those parties will be in and very little movement of voters or, for that matter, party collaboration across those borders

And that would be that would actually be a recipe for quite severe political instability

interestingly. But I would broadly say the most likely outcome is that we do move back

because of our electoral system, apart from anything else, to about a two and a half party

system. But the apparent similarity will conceal the fact that these will be very, very different

kinds of parties with different voters and defined in a different way to the ones that

we're familiar with, and probably with different names. Extraordinary times indeed And to segue

If you want to understand these extraordinary times The Great Realignment, Why the New Right is Here to Stay

Is the best manual In order to do so Steve, it's a wonderful book, congratulations on writing it

And thank you for your insight today Thank you very much, and yes, go and read the book